Arab Nationalism was like many other pan-ethnic movements (such as Pan-Slavism, Pan-Africanism, Pan-Turkish, Pan-Americanism) that came before and after. It was associated with the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser between the Suez...
moreArab Nationalism was like many other pan-ethnic movements (such as Pan-Slavism, Pan-Africanism, Pan-Turkish, Pan-Americanism) that came before and after. It was associated with the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser between the Suez Crisis and the Six-Day War in 1967. During that time Nasser attempted to unit all Arabic-speaking people under his rule. He succeeded temporarily with the United Arab Republic (between 1958 and 1961) and a pro-Nasser regime under Brigadier General Abdel Karim Kassem in Iraq (between 1958 and 1963). What unified his attempt at Pan-Arab unity was Nasser’s antagonism (even anti-Semitism) toward the Zionist State of Israel, his advocacy against the plight of the Palestinian refugees, and his adherence to Arab Socialism.
What complicated his efforts to achieve unity was the competition for power between oil-rich Saudi Arabia and strategically-located Egypt because of the Suez Canal that was closed to shipping after the Suez Crisis. This competition was also between Nasser’s socialist, anti-imperialist agenda and anti-democratic monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Jordan that were imposed on the Middle East by the British after World War One. It was complicated by the Saudis secret support for the Muslim Brotherhood that wanted to overthrow Nasser and impose an Islamic regime like that in Saudi Arabia. This resulted in Nasser’s decision to support the socialist republicans against the conservative former imam in a civil war that broke out in Yemen. This depleted Egypt’s resources and damaged Nasser’s cause of Arab unity. King Hussein of Jordan was forced into an alliance with the Saudis against the Syrians and Palestinians who tried to overthrow him. However, when Israel began to divert water from the Jordan River above the Sea of Galilee, Jordan was forced to join with Syria and Egypt in the disastrous Six-Day War in 1967.
Further complicating the situation was the Cold War. Nasser was in fact an anti-Communist who wanted to follow a neutral course by appealing for aid from both the United States and the Soviet Union. But during the Eisenhower administration the United States wanted to maintain an alliance with Saudi Arabia with its rich oil resources without alienating the American Jewish supporters of Israel. Under the anti-Communist Eisenhower Doctrine the United States supported autocratic regimes like Saudi Arabia, sent troops into Lebanon to prop up the anti-Nasser regime of its Maronite Christian president Camille Chamoun, and the CIA worked to overthrow socialist regimes like Iraq under Abdel Karim Kassem. Kennedy tried to restrain Israel from developing a nuclear bomb, but his successor Lyndon Johnson was too preoccupied with the Vietnam War to follow up. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was trying to exert its influence in the Middle East as a counter to what it saw as the American threat to Russia’s southern border by the presence of American nuclear submarines in the Mediterranean. The Eisenhower Doctrine led to the United States’ military intervention of Lebanon and the CIA’s efforts to overturn the pro-Nasser regimes in Iraq and Syria.
In retrospect, there are many lessons for today from this period of Arab Nationalism. First, the United States was blinded by the Cold War ideology of countering the spread of Communism, just as it is blinded today by the concept of the War on Terror, instead of understanding the underlying ethnic issues behind these ideologies. Second, by not seeing these conflicts in terms of the time-honored American principle of self-determination, the United States has taken the sides of anti-democratic monarchies (in the case of Jordan and Saudi Arabia) against anti-imperialist (in the case of Egypt) and anti-colonial (in the case of the Palestinians from the Arab point of view) movements. Third, during this period Israel secretly developed nuclear weapons, which was initially opposed by the Kennedy administration, but then overlooked by the Johnson administration. Today, Israel opposes Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear capacity and is pressuring the United States to take its side. The answer should be nuclear disarmament of all countries with nuclear weapons. Fourth, the United States seems to be baffled by Islamic movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, first by supporting them and then by opposing them (in case the case of Egypt and Afghanistan). In Egypt, then as today, strong military leaders (like Nasser and the current regime), were and are necessary to overcome the anti-democratic threat of Islamism. The irony is that Nasser’s defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War paved the wave for the end of Arab Nationalism and the rise of Islamism.
